Yorkshire in the 1930s, a country veterinary practice and the people who keep its doors open: All Creatures Great and Small is a 2020 British drama series drawn from the autobiographical books of James Herriot.
What is All Creatures Great and Small about?
Work at a rural vet's surgery does not keep office hours, and that simple fact drives the series. Its staff are called out to farms and homes across the Yorkshire countryside, where an ailing animal can mean a family's income, a child's companion or a farmer's pride. The show follows these friendly, sometimes stubborn colleagues through a run of separate adventures that begins in the 1930s and carries on into the 1940s. Animals large and small come through their hands, and each visit doubles as a look at the people standing anxiously beside the patient. The practice itself, with its routines and disagreements, ties one episode to the next.
About the cast
Nicholas Ralph, Samuel West, Anna Madeley and Rachel Shenton head the cast, and the catalogue credits Colin Callender on the directing side. The series is built as an ensemble piece. A veterinary practice is a workplace before it is anything else, so the drama grows out of how a small group of people divide the calls, argue over method and look after one another.
Context & significance
The source material is a set of autobiographical books by James Herriot about life as a country vet, and this is not the first time they have reached television: an earlier adaptation ran from 1978 to 1990, and the 2020 series is a remake of it for a new generation of viewers. That history explains much of the appeal. It is a period drama where the stakes are local and human in scale, set in a part of England whose farms and villages give the stories their texture. Episodes run about 45 minutes, which makes the show easy to watch one at a time rather than in long sittings.
Watching All Creatures Great and Small on Ktime
All Creatures Great and Small is available on K-Time with both a Persian dub and Persian subtitles. Reading this page is open to everyone; playing the episodes requires signing in to a K-Time account. The service is designed for Persian-speaking viewers abroad, with a Farsi interface throughout.